I want to start this by saying that I absolutely love movies set on trains. The closed, claustrophobic setting, the ensemble cast of characters confined to one location, it all has the potential for so much drama. Set it within a cold winter snow drift (my favorite season), and assemble an outrageously good cast featuring the likes of Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and more, and Murder on the Orient Express had the potential to be some kind of masterpiece. Throw in Sidney Lumet behind the camera and the fact that it's based on an Agatha Christie novel and it sounds too good to be true.
Turns out that it was, as the film is an undercooked and instantly forgettable waste of a lot of extraordinary talent. There are so many great actors here and aside from Finney they all get about ten minutes to do the best they can with thin and unmemorable characters. Thin is probably the best word to describe the whole thing, as the mystery is essentially just a long series of red herrings deliberately thrown at the audience so that Finney's Hercule Poirot can look like a genius when he puts it all together at the end, but it's not like any of that really matters if it's impossible to engage in the mystery in the first place.
The actors all do their best and some of them, particularly Bacall, are able to leave at least some impression, but they have next to nothing to work with and even the greatest actors need something from the page. I'd put most of my blame for why this was a failure on the shoulders of screenwriter Paul Dehn, who adapted Christie's novel into something cheap and frustratingly pedestrian. I found it all to be a trying experience, with this weird attempt at a slightly comedic tone that never worked, making the comedic take on Poirot stick out like a sore thumb.
Turns out that it was, as the film is an undercooked and instantly forgettable waste of a lot of extraordinary talent. There are so many great actors here and aside from Finney they all get about ten minutes to do the best they can with thin and unmemorable characters. Thin is probably the best word to describe the whole thing, as the mystery is essentially just a long series of red herrings deliberately thrown at the audience so that Finney's Hercule Poirot can look like a genius when he puts it all together at the end, but it's not like any of that really matters if it's impossible to engage in the mystery in the first place.
The actors all do their best and some of them, particularly Bacall, are able to leave at least some impression, but they have next to nothing to work with and even the greatest actors need something from the page. I'd put most of my blame for why this was a failure on the shoulders of screenwriter Paul Dehn, who adapted Christie's novel into something cheap and frustratingly pedestrian. I found it all to be a trying experience, with this weird attempt at a slightly comedic tone that never worked, making the comedic take on Poirot stick out like a sore thumb.